Jameela Jamil's editors letter: 'We’ve seen too much to go back to how things were'

This month's guest editor's main priority? To make sure you're doing okay.

Hello.

Bloody Hell. It’s March again.

It’s such a joy to be asked to be on the cover of Marie Claire UK and to contribute as a guest editor this month.

How are you? Are you ok? If you’re alive still, then you have already achieved a phenomenon, so if, like me, you have devolved in truly every single other way (I barely brushed my teeth some days) as a human being... that’s ok. You survived a pandemic. Top tier turn out in my books.

And now you have a chance to work on the next phase of your life. The one that's started after we've all been exposed to truths and value systems that we can never unsee again.

Were we living right?

Were we living meaningfully?

Were we around the right people?

Did we care about the right things?

Were we really going in the right direction?

Were we happy?

When we look back on our death beds, will we feel satisfied with who we were and what we did?

These are the questions the past twelve months have drenched me in. I am excited by the prospect of what we can become now that we are a society more open to the truth, more aware of who deserves our respect and attention, and more open to difficult conversations.

Misogyny, racism, transphobia, ableism... these are all things that we're leaning into discuss. We're no longer as easily discouraged and silenced by the eye rolls, yawns and outright gaslighting of the privileged who do that - who shame us out of telling the truth, because it threatens their position and their comfort.

Remember, equality to the privileged feels like oppression. We all have to face that feeling and look for ways in which we can extend our privilege to others.

We have to share, care and protect.

We have to scrap in and help, even when we don’t know what we’re doing, and when embarrassing mistakes could occur (and I speak from experience.) We have to work towards progress every day, and abandon our appetite for perfection.

We have to try.

We’ve seen too much to go back to how things were. So now, we must walk forward together, learn as much as we can, as fast as we can, and try to help each other back up when we fall.

I’m so sorry if I sound drunk in this letter. I’m not. I’m just feeling more than I know what to do with these days. It’s hard to even know how to put it into words sometimes.

But, I hope you enjoy this issue. And I really do hope you’re ok.

As part of Jameela's stint as guest editor of Marie Claire, we've got a whole load of content going live for you, including the meaning of self love with The Millennial Therapist Sara Kubrick, a discussion on coping with your mental health in lockdown with comedian Catherine Bohart and an discussion about why time's up on social media abuse from Munroe Bergdorf. Enjoy.